A Sleep Too Big

Remaking a classic film is a tricky business, more often than not producing inferior works, such as 1978's The Big Sleep. Based on the 1939 Raymond Chandler novel, it was made into a classic film noir in 1946 starring Humphrey Bogart. The 1978 version stars Robert Mitchum, a noir leading man of equal calibre to Bogart. Yet director Michael Winner creates a film with lethargic performances by normally great talents.

There is exactly one quality in which this film surpasses the '46 version, and that's in its inclusion of nudity. I'm not just being a pervert here. There's a scene in which the detective protagonist, Philip Marlowe, comes across a young woman, a daughter of his client, naked in front of a camera, the resulting pornographic pictures becoming a source of blackmail that motivates the actions of various characters throughout the story. The Hays' code in 1946 prevented the actress from appearing naked in the film. Howard Hawks decided to film it exactly as though she were--except she's actually wearing a cheongsam. So the implication then is that pictures of her in a cheongsam are being used for blackmail. It doesn't make any sense and it's a problem. However, performances by Bogart and Lauren Bacall and Martha Vickers, a screenplay by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett, and Hawks' direction made the movie a classic anyway.

Martha Vickers gives a much better performance than Candy Clark as the younger Sternwood daughter, who does look good naked but plays the character as so broadly mentally disturbed it seems a parody. It also drains a lot of the flirty energy from the film, but most of that is actually sapped by Mitchum, a 60 year old playing a man in his late 30s. I'm not one to say a man in his 60s can't have chemistry with a woman in her 20s (don't give me the ridiculous modern line about "power imbalance") but in this case Mitchum shows all the magnetism of a grandfather falling asleep while reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears. And I like Robert Mitchum!

Joan Collins is in the film and is about as somnambulant. She keeps her accent, more or less, because the story was moved to England from the original novel's LA setting. Why? It becomes more and more puzzling as more and more characters who just happen to be Americans are introduced.

Marlowe, of course, is American. Mitchum had hazarded an Irish accent in Ryan's Daughter a few years before but I guess this wasn't enough to induce Winner to call on Mitchum's capacity for accents, such as it was. Then General Sternwood is played by Jimmy Stewart, the best performance in the film, though he's only in two scenes. It's a little unlikely that Marlowe, an ex-GI, became a private detective in London after the war, but we're also meant to think Sternwood is an American general who retired to an English ancestral manor complete with servants and a vast collection of family portraits. So both his daughters are also American. If that's not enough, Canino, one of the villains, is American, too, with absolutely no explanation. He's played by Richard Boone.

Aside from Collins, the noteworthy English actors include Oliver Reed and Mitchum's Ryan's Daughter co-star John Mills. They're so few, it would've made more sense to set the story in LA and make them the foreigners. John Mills as a Scotland Yard detective also has only two scenes.

So, yes, despite the nudity, I'd still recommend the 1946 version. Or The Big Lebowski in which the pornography blackmail subplot also makes sense.

Farscape is Near

25 years ago, Farscape was born. One of the greatest space opera franchises of all time, it combined top notch art design, Jim Henson creatures, brilliant actors, and even smarter scripts. It was so good, it inspired James Gunn to make the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. If you haven't seen this series, you should jump on this opportunity.

The 25th anniversary stream, hosted by the official Farscape YouTube channel, is one of two continuous marathons of the entire series on YouTube. The other is hosted by Shout! Studios:

Both streams seem to be on season 4, episode 4, as I write this. If you prefer to start at the beginning, Shout! also has the premiere episode available for free on YouTube:

The Farscape channel has the first five full episodes of season one as well as the first four of season four. If you're feeling let down by Star Wars and Star Trek these days, Farscape is an antidote I heartily recommend. It's classic serial, seat of your pants, storytelling. It's a true Flash Gordon for the 21st century with some of the smartest scripts by David Kemper (Star Trek: TNG), Naren Shankar (Star Trek: TNG, The Expanse), and Rockne S. O'Bannon (Seaquest DSV) of each of those writers' careers. It's dark, it's funny, it's sexy, it's immensely satisfying. WATCH IT.

X Sonnet #1867

Engrossing lamps prepared the mind for streams.
Aggressive rivers laid the bed for eyes.
Aromas cooked for men derail their dreams.
However, ev'ryone would like some pies.
Disturbing towers spit the nuns afield.
Aggressive dreamers push the dead to kill.
Above the rain, the air compels a yield.
Oppressive mists distort the sister's will.
Returning print presents a sleepy son.
Authentic dames redeem the picture book.
Impressive slugs consider sleep as fun.
It takes a hill of gold to make a hook.
Concussive thoughts subdue the forward flow.
Beyond the garden wall, the flowers grow.

The Big Bad Bates

The Bates Motel was back in business in 1986's Psycho III, with Norman Bates and his imaginary mother back in charge. After the second film recast Norman as a protagonist struggling with deceptive people and his own mind, the third film places Norman squarely in the villain role, returning affairs somewhat to how they were in Hitchcock's film. As a result, it's far less interesting than the first or second film but it has a few points of interest.

Anthony Perkins returns as Norman Bates and he also directs this one. He's not incompetent as a director but he's nowhere close to Richard Franklin, who directed the second, and of course he's no Hitchcock. He pays more homage to Hitchcock than Franklin did, recreating several shots and the opening scene even has an extended reference to Vertigo.

One of the more sadly underdeveloped aspects of the film is the female lead, Maureen, played by Diana Scarwid. Scarwid's performance isn't as good as Meg Tilly in the second or Janet Leigh in the first but she has an interesting premise. She's a nun but, after accidentally causing a woman's death, Maureen leaves her convent and winds up at the Bates Motel. We finally get a shot of Norman actually perving out, watching her through the peephole as she undresses before switching to killer mother mode. Then events take an unexpected turn.

It turns out there's a chance for romance between Norman and Maureen. One of the more tantalising questions in the series is, "What if Norman actually consummates a relationship with a woman?" Of course, the closer he gets to the threshold, the more liable the madness is to take over, which comes off as quite psychologically credible, and Perkins' performance is still very good, though not as magnetic as it is in the second film. It's unfortunate that Maureen is not a very complex character, and the movie cuts her off before she has much time to develop. I would have preferred an exploration of a relationship between Norman and Mary from the second film. It would be a difficult thing, I guess, and I can see where screenwriters are coming from, not wanting to spoil Norman's mental illness as it is. But he and Mary together could've been a fascinatingly twisted path.

Psycho III has Jeff Fahey playing a scumbag to rile Norman up, basically taking over from Dennis Franz in the second film. Fahey's character differs in that he's actually able to charm women, leading to some understated pulp comedy here and there. He's fun in a cheesy way not typical of the series but would later make him perfect for his roles in Robert Rodriguez films.

Making Chaos, Not War

War, marriage, loyalty, all these are abstract human concepts and showing them up as false is common fodder for romance. 1954's Senso starts out that way but then becomes something weirder, offering a glimpse of the nightmare at the other side of the argument.

During the Austrian occupation of Italy in the 19th century, a wealthy, fiercely partisan Italian countess, Livia (Alida Valli), falls very much against her will in love with a handsome young Austrian officer called Franz (Farley Granger).

In this tale of star-crossed romance with beautiful cinematography, one might be surprised by how much a feeling of constant anxiety is the primary emotional impression of the film. Franz following Livia as she tries to walk away from him in Venice at night, only to come across a murdered Austrian officer lying alone in the street; Livia dealing with the ambiguous circumstances around her cousin's organising of a protest and meeting Franz at the same time, her compulsions and loyalties already becoming confused at a time when firm decision is desperately required; so many scenes contribute to a sense of constant, dangerous, insoluble issues.

The centrepiece of the film occurs when Livia and her husband are staying at a gorgeous countryside villa and Franz decides to make a surprise visit. The scene begins with Livia asleep, slowly awakened by a clamour outside accompanied by ceaselessly barking dogs. Someone has been seen on her balcony, she overhears. Of course it's Franz so she yells out to her servant that it was only she herself who was seen on the balcony. The sounds of barking dogs continue throughout the scene, though, as Franz, smug and cocksure, saunters into the room. In response to Livia's panic, he threatens to go out and let her husband's men catch him, seemingly a self-conscious reference to a similar scene in Errol Flynn's Robin Hood. It's punctuated so that it becomes clear that Franz gets a predatory pleasure from manipulating Livia's anxiety.

It transpires finally that Livia must hide Franz overnight. As they embrace in the granary, Franz remarks on how meaningless are all these things human beings believe in. How men in uniform are still just men, the uniform's only their to flatter their shape and provoke women to coo over them.

Does Franz think he's really comforting Livia? Here's a woman who, at the start of the film, had been fiercely declaring her support for an Italy free of Austrian oppression. Now her passions are concentrated on Franz and concealing him. The final act of the film is the logical next step in the descent as Franz and Livia's shared madness is reflected in a chaotic street scene of soldiers with prostitutes.

This Luchino Visconti film is some of the most beautiful Technicolour filmmaking of the 1950s. Senso is available on The Criterion Channel.

Jungle Blur

I continued my impromptu survey of films counted among the worst ever made yesterday by watching 1981's Tarzan, the Ape Man. This one has a 10% score on Rotten Tomatoes and many prominent critics have gone on record saying it's one of the worst movies ever made. Wikipedia includes it in an article called "List of films considered the worst". It deserves its reputation. It makes Sheena: Queen of the Jungle look like Citizen Kane.

Top billing goes to Bo Derek and Richard Harris, who play Jane Parker and her father, James Parker. The story is only very loosely based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' original and a subtext of sexual possessiveness on the part of the patriarch is about as subtle as a whole ham on a paper plate.

And, boy, do I mean ham. Harris gobbles mountains of scenery. It reminded me of Michael Fassbender in 12 Years a Slave. There's not a nanosecond Harris doesn't find a way to squeeze in some shouted intonation or expansive gesticulation. Maybe the idea was that Parker'd gone batty living as a lone European in an African tribe who worship him for reasons never explained. It's oversold, to say the least.

Then Jane shows up and James at first mistakes her for her mother. Harris portrays James' lust for his daughter with the same degree of subtlety as everything else. I guess you could compare him to Klaus Kinski in Aguerre, the Wrath of God but where director Werner Herzog made Kinski's violent narcissism organic to the story, the director of Tarzan, the Ape Man is so out of his depth that Harris practically rolls over him and squashes him.

That director is none other than John Derek, husband of Bo. At the time Bo had declared she didn't want to make any more movies but movies directed by her husband, a gesture of matrimonial fidelity even more unfortunate than Kate Beckinsale's commitment to Len Wiseman.

John Derek shows absolutely zero instinct for composition or editing. Some of the shots do benefit from the film's beautiful Sri Lankan location but Derek shows no sense of understanding what's important to show the audience and what not. I remember how impressed I was by the shot of Tanya Roberts' swing on a vine to land barefoot on the ground in Sheena. In this, there's a shot of Bob Derek just climbing down a vine but she's almost totally obscured by a tree branch for most of the descent. I think she actually climbed down the vine without using a ladder but you can barely see it.

The action scenes are a blurry mess--when she's attacked by the boa constrictor, it must have been shot at a normal rate of frames per second and then slowed down later, creating a choppy effect. But it probably seemed necessary when the snake looked totally fake otherwise. A consequence of this is that the moment seems to go on forever, an action sequence of almost unintelligible blurred arms, scales, and splashing water.

You may have noticed I haven't even mentioned Tarzan himself. He's played by Miles O'Keefe--yes, that's right, Ator!--who was originally employed as a stuntman but had to replace the first actor when that actor suddenly quit and/or was fired (there are apparently conflicting accounts). O'Keefe never speaks, there's never even the "You Jane, Me Tarzan" moment. He certainly looks the part, though, and I can't really blame him for how it turned out.

It's a tough movie to get through. It has two good points. Bo Derek does look fantastic naked, and she's often naked in the movie or wearing see-through clothes, and Harris' acting is such a spectacle of actor's ego run rampant that it is kind of fascinating. But, boy oh boy, John Derek paces this movie like yoghurt through a tap.

X Sonnet #1866

In care of metal webs, the rust retreats.
The thoughtful poison moves the roots of plants.
Remembered itches weave the neural sheets.
A sudden question stopped the hill of ants.
The inland sea was really far away.
As far as out can make a crumbling hut.
But courage steels the buxom stowaway.
Detective Nose belongs to Mister Mutt.
The yellow jeep conducts a verdant key.
A smoking horn has lured the babes abroad.
A fire bird conveys the baker's glee.
A quiet man in lime does none applaud.
The mutant mammoth curled its softened tusk.
The pine became a shady blue at dusk.

Poseidon Stays Indoors

The ship was still sinking seven years later in 1979's Beyond the Poseidon Adventure. With a 0% Rotten Tomato score, it's one of the most disliked movies I've ever seen. Yet failure of this magnitude is somehow impressive.

It has an impressive cast including Michael Caine, Sally Field, Peter Boyle, Telly Savalas, Karl Malden, and Slim Pickens. Caine and Malden play Mike and Wilbur, respectively, two scavengers who come across the still sinking Poseidon after the cast of the first film has already been evacuated. They're joined by Sally Field, who's a stowaway on Mike's little boat.

They have competition from Telly Savalas and his crew. They greet each other politely enough but Savalas remarks he and his men are already prepared to enter the wreck--Savalas says this in a pure white double breasted suit which, of course, is perfectly practical for boarding the capsized and partly flooded cruise ship.

Mike and Wilbur aren't much better, wearing just button downed shirts and slacks. Despite all the talk from Mike claiming all the treasure he can grab as his legal right, he doesn't bring so much as a satchel to carry it in. When they do find the goods, Mike just slings a pathetic little bag over his shoulder.

All the interior sets are perfectly level and evenly lit. Challenges include Slim Pickens wanting to take all the wine, a blind man and his wife who're still holed up in quarters, and a double cross from Telly Savalas. It all feels like a peculiarly expensive TV movie.

I guess what I learned from this movie is there's never a wrong time to dress up; even the most ruthless of scavengers may prefer to be unencumbered by material wealth; no ship is ever in so much danger an ensemble cast can't stand around inside it, arguing about salvage rights; and to some people, wine is dearer than life itself. Thanks, Irwin Allen.

Free Bard

I discovered a channel on YouTube recently I'm very excited about, The Shakespeare Network. They have a website, too. It's a non-profit group relying on donations to provide free content, primarily Shakespeare but also Wagner and Wilde and others. I was delighted recently to find they have the 1969 version of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband with Jeremy Brett as Lord Goring--remastered in 4k!

It's funny how all the qualities that made Brett a perfect Sherlock Holmes also made him perfect for a Wildean protagonist. That deep, eloquent voice and those hawkish features. I heard Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde got along very well, actually.

An Ideal Husband is a good play and certainly relevant to our increasingly puritanical times--Wilde was lampooning Victorian virtues so it says something that his witticisms feel fresher and more dangerous than they did when I first read him thirty or so years ago. But there's a lot of just plain good insight, too. Like Mrs. Cheveley's line about how "women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are." Ah! That's so fucking true. I've also been reading The Picture of Dorian Gray lately and this description of a minor character just killed me:

She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was always in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions.

God, it's so good, it's deadly.

Last night I noticed The Shakespeare Network had my favourite film of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, the 1968 one with Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Diana Rigg, Ian Holm, and David Warner with cinematography from Peter Suschitzky (Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Empire Strikes Back, several David Cronenberg movies). It's a good time to watch it. The heat here's about to make me see fairies anyway.

There are Many Plants

Alyssa Milano takes the baton from Drew Barrymore to play the hazardous Lily in 1996's Poison Ivy II: Lily. It's direct to video, has a 14% Rotten Tomato rating, and is about what you'd expect.

Director Anne Goursaud commented the film was more popular with boys because of Milano's nude scenes but the plot feels much more like the kind of porn aimed at girls. It was written and directed by women, so it's not surprising. Lily, Milano's character, like Bella in Twilight or Osha/Mae on The Acolyte, doesn't have much of a personality but all the men in the story would die for her.

"Your beauty frightens me," says her art professor, Donald (Xander Berkeley), as he convinces her to pose nude for him. Lily finds a box of Ivy's old stuff in her dorm room, presumably the same Ivy from the first film. Lily poses in front of a mirror and quotes from Ivy's diary tidbits about seducing and manipulating men. Later, in a final scene exposition dump because none of this was established throughout the film, Lily explains that she wanted to be different and sexy because she was having trouble adjusting to the crazy students at her art school.

Primarily it's the professor versus a slacker bad boy student called Gredin (Johnathon Schaech--yes, that's how it's spelt) who are helplessly devoted to her beauty but there's also a quiet guy named Robert whom Lily kisses at a masquerade, her one actually slightly promiscuous act in the film and she immediately expresses shame. She also does things the script wants us to think are crazy like cutting her hair from waist length to shoulder length and wearing halters with no bra. Her nice girl roommate Tanya (Kathryne Dora Brown) is shocked when Lily wears black lipstick and flowers in her hair. In retaliation, Tanya says she won't introduce Lily to her girlfriend, who is introduced at that moment at the same time Tanya's lesbianism is established. The two girls kiss, leave the room, and leave the film, apparently the point being that lesbians can be the moral centre of a film when the protagonist is ever so slightly colouring outside the lines. Their mission accomplished, they depart from the story.

It occurs to me this film qualifies as "Dark Academia" with its college setting and gossipy plot involving sex and murder. It has a few moments of cheesy fun, many unintentionally hilarious moments. There's a really cheap ploy for shock value when the professor's little daughter is hit by a car. The low brow manipulation was cheesy enough but I started cracking up when I saw this guy driving the car.

It's not just the actor's appearance but also his lighting and the expression. I feel like the little girl wandered into an Arby's commercial. I vividly imagined this guy going out for a roast beef sandwich and I was delighted he got mixed up at all in the soap opera dinner party.

The little girl's stuffed bunny flies up in the air and actually lands on the asphalt with a "squeak". Was the comedy entirely unintended? I wonder.

I discovered Alyssa Milano is secretly a pop megastar in eastern countries. Apparently she has said she hasn't tried to establish her music career in the U.S. because she fears it would be laughed at. Really?

Yeah, okay, that's fair.

It reminds me of Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless saying Americans like the worst French performers, like Maurice Chevalier. Of course, it's Chevalier's outrageous Frenchness that appealed to American audiences, so I can only assume it's Milano's adorable Americanness that makes up for the complete lack of interesting vocal inflection. Even so, looking at her music videos, it's astonishing one was produced, let alone several. I mean, it's on par with Rebecca Black.

The Regenerative Mutant Duo

Well, I sure got hyped for 2024's Deadpool & Wolverine. I enjoyed the first two Deadpool films but all the teasing around this new one made it feel like Deadpool might indeed be the Marvel Jesus he claims to be. I realised how well the hype had played me while I watched the fairly average, decently entertaining movie. I wasn't angry, I was just kind of amused. Kudos to the marketing team or whoever was responsible for stirring up the internet storm--Ryan Reynolds deserves a lot of credit.

Hugh Jackman does, too, though more passively. He allowed his Wolverine portrayal to be played up as legendary. And they made use of the fact that he said he wasn't going to play the role anymore after Logan. It almost immediately becomes a gratuitous but effective gag in the movie itself.

How about the movie itself? It premiered a few days earlier in Japan so I got to see it. It's fine. It's better than the first one, not as good as the second. The absence of Domino was particularly disappointing but the cast was already crowded. Domino's an interesting enough character alone, she could carry a movie.

Deadpool & Wolverine is a buddy comedy, in the mould of 48HRS or Lethal Weapon. It's not as good as either of those but it's not bad. I got tired of Deadpool's endless jokes and his emotional plot about how he wants to matter and get back with his girlfriend is fairly bland, especially since Morena Baccarin's character amounts to basically just another cameo. It's never really clear why she broke up with Deadpool or even if she really did.

Some of the fourth wall breaking jokes were funny though most of the jokes I actually thought were funny were entirely within the confines of those imaginary walls. I found the term "educated wish" very funny.

Hugh Jackman sells Wolverine's damage a lot better though he, too, suffers from vague writing. We know he blames himself for the deaths of the other X-Men in his universe but it's left entirely up to the audience's imagination just how much blame he actually deserves.

Audiences in Japanese movie theatres rarely laugh even if they're enjoying a comedy but I think nearly all the jokes about 20th Century Fox and Disney went right over everyone's heads. I remember once talking about the Sony and Disney rights issues with Spider-Man in a junior high school class I was teaching. No-one knew what I was talking about and it was very difficult to explain. A lot of people here have never even thought about IP rights and so on so I wonder if this will affect the film's global box office. On the other hand, it's not rated R in Japan, it's rated 15, which means third year junior high school students can see it. Mainly it's because the Japanese don't care about cursewords and ultra-violence isn't such a big deal, especially animated violence, which this basically is.

Deadpool does have a fanbase in Japan. I saw a girl at the movie theatre, dressed as a maid, taking pictures of all the Deadpool & Wolverine posters, even posing in front of one, holding up a Deadpool keychain.

My favourite thing about the movie, surprisingly, is the villain. Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova actually steals the scene from Ryan Reynolds. She's funny and threatening and really very cool. I truly hope we haven't seen the last of her.

I was surprised the movie didn't tie in to the MCU more than it does though it really rewards the viewer for having watched the Loki series on Disney+.

As for the cameos from other Marvel film universes, mostly they were amusing. Occasionally they were cool and one of them added a little emotional weight to Wolverine's story. One cameo of a famous actor who'd never before had a chance to play a character he'd been rumoured to have been cast for proved he's totally unsuited for the role. One very surprising character who'd starred in a series of films blew all the other cameos away. The actor has been basically retired for a while and he more than proved he still has the stuff.

The climax of the film amounted to the usual light show with a few more jokes. Deadpool made a joke about being "in the homestretch", alluding to the long run times of these films and I was inclined to take it less as a joke and more as a helpful notification that I would soon be able to go out and get a snack. It wasn't that I was hating the movie but it was actually nice to know it wasn't going to run out its welcome.

I don't think this is going to save the MCU. But if you can take it for what it is, which is about a third of what it's hyped to be, it's not bad. If you enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok, you'll probably get about 60% of that pleasure from it.

The Image of Heat

I watched my favourite summer movie last night, Kurosawa Akira's 1949 detective movie Stray Dog (野良犬). Even back in San Diego, it was a sympathetic companion on blazing hot days. Now that I live in Japan, experiencing the more humid heat for a summer with a rainy season, the movie's an even better friend.

Of course, there was no air conditioning in 1949 Tokyo. That scene where Murakami interviews the girl in the police box, with the tin roof another character remarks on makes it like an oven, visually captures the muggy misery so perfectly. You can feel how that poor girl is just smooshed by the god of humidity.

Before that, there's Mifune Toshiro just soaked with sweat as he goes through records. Sweat stains are really taboo now in Japan but not in 1949 I guess. You can see sweat stains going through the armpit of his jacket. Not as badly as Bill Paxton in Predator 2 but it's still impressive.

The movie also makes me really thirsty for beer so I had some Sapporo while I watched. It's a good thing I prefer Japanese beer because you can't seem to get imported beer in Japan, though there's all the familiar whiskey brands from Scotland, Ireland, and the U.S. Kurosawa's Drunken Angel makes me want whiskey but in Stray Dog there's the scene where Murakami pursues the pickpocket all day until they finish at a beer joint and she gives up, bringing him a bottle of beer to where he sulks outside and they both look up at the stars.

This is just before the famous 11 minute sequence with all the actual footage of post-war Tokyo. Mifune in a ragged uniform, desperately searching the crowds for someone who sells guns. But maybe the scene that best sells the heat is the one of all the sweaty, exhausted dancing girls. I guess the biggest flaw in he film is Awaji Keiko as one of those girls, the one who ends up being the killer's girlfriend. I remember hearing how, no matter what Kurosawa did, Awaji just failed to express any of the emotions any scene called on her to express, and Awaji later said she regretted being so difficult. It's extraordinary to see from an actress in a major film, but such extreme emotional reserve is not uncommon in Japan even to-day.

I guess I'll be going back out into that heat to-day. Maybe I'll be lucky and the rain will kick in.

X Sonnet #1865

The heavy gavel hides a broken clock.
A vase conceals a spy who waters plants.
The ancient wreck was hid beneath a dock.
The Mighty Thor's disguise was purple pants.
A doubled sky obscures the mirror lake.
A war was hid behind a word for "late".
An abacus was hid within a cake.
Accountants keep a hidden dinner slate.
A secret question looms behind the moot.
Compartments kept the smuggled danger space.
A rubber knife was strapped inside the boot.
On Yavin's moon, they built a Rebel base.
Concealed behind the screen's the mask of Pan.
Revealed above the ocean, sirens swam.

Once the Psycho Box is Checked . . .

Having been made sane by Robert Loggia, Norman Bates is set loose again in 1983's Psycho II. It's a pulpier film than the original, concerned more with plot, heroes, and villains. On the other hand, Anthony Perkins gives a spellbinding performance and the film's complicated plot functions as a portrait of overwhelming paranoia.

Bates is set up with a job at diner in addition to resuming ownership of the Bates motel. Dennis Franz plays the sleazy motel manager who deeply offends Norman. Perkins plays Norman like the boy scout who never grew up which, in a sense, he is. He brings home a beautiful young woman, Mary (Meg Tilly), from the diner. Mary says her boyfriend's thrown her out and at first it seems like an awful convenient setup for a pretty young woman to end up staying with Norman. But all is not as it seems.

Perkins' performance is so vulnerable and honest, you really feel for him as he tries his damnedest to stay sane. Various forces conspire against him and then some of those forces conspire against each other. The little more information the audience is let in on than Norman gives us just enough insight to see how impossibly tangled is the web he's caught in. While the first film is about the troubling, blurred line between victim and perpetrator, the second has rendered Norman entirely a victim, though in a very interesting way. Perkins' performance has a lot to do with it. I don't think the film would've been half as effective with someone else. With all the deception swirling around him, it's the truth of Perkins' performance that anchors the film.

Mary's relationship with him gets complicated though there's only one moment that suggests a possibility of romance between the two and I loved Perkins' performance when the idea occurs to him. The look of pain, fear, and hope mingling on his face makes human vulnerability in itself seem like a threat. No wonder Mary's frightened.

The Present President is Not the Future President

One good thing about Kamala Harris taking over the Democratic nomination is that she'll be able to beat Trump at a debate. Yes, odds are stacked well against her actually becoming president but the former prosecutor should have an easy time showing she has a better command of facts and logic than Trump. Sadly, with her reputation of political partisanship and lack of natural charisma, it's probably going to be like Hillary Clinton all over again. On the other hand, the 2016 race was very close and Clinton did win the popular vote.

I do think there's a chance Harris could win if focus could be placed on her greater competence. Biden's perceived incompetence and Trump's actual incompetence means we're coming out of eight years without a president everyone could agree on was basically qualified for the job. It's possible this issue could have better legs than woke-fatigue and the habitual, naked manipulations of the Left. Trump lies all the time but that tends to seem innocent next to the mass manipulations of media the Left perpetrates. Harris would do well if she can distance herself from that.

It is late in the game but three months is a long time in politics. A lot could still happen.

Bram Stoker's Fried Chicken

I've been growing a Van Dyke lately but since I wear glasses I'm a little worried I'll look like Colonel Sanders. I started thinking about other examples of men who combined glasses with a Van Dyke and I thought of Gary Oldman in Dracula. This led me to imagine the whole 1992 movie with Colonel Sanders in place of Dracula.

I imagine the scene in the church at the beginning with Dracula proclaiming "Chicken is the life and it shall be mine!" holding up a bucket of fried chicken instead of blood. On the carriage on the way to the castle, a woman hands Harker a necklace with McDonalds' golden arches and says, "For chickens travel fast". Then a host of chickens running about can be seen the swirling mist before the carriage approaches. Sanders is a polite host to Harker, treating him to a modest dinner of roast beef, but excusing himself by saying, "I never eat . . . beef."

Lured by curiosity and a familiar voice in the night, Harker makes his way to the bed chamber of Sanders' brides. Monica Bellucci arises from the bed holding a bucket of chicken. She sees the golden arches necklace and it melts before her fury. In the mirror above, we see Harker writhing on the sheets, drumsticks in both hands and a greasy wing in his teeth. Then Sanders appears, enraged. The brides ask if they are to have nothing this night and Sanders brings forth a live chicken. Harker, horrified, screams. Seeing this, Sanders cackles in sadistic pleasure.

Back in England, Lucy Westenra has been growing increasingly exhausted and Dr. Seward is confounded by the empty buckets and chicken grease on her bed every morning. One night, Mina follows Lucy as she seems to walk in a trance out to the garden. There Mina beholds Colonel Sanders making violent love to Lucy, fried chicken paraphernalia strewn about them.

Van Helsing is giving a lecture on the relationship between fried food and cholesterol when he receives a telegram from Seward. He leaves at once for London where he's shocked by Lucy's state. "This young woman needs chicken and chicken she must have!"

Later, the men emerge exhausted. Quincy, an American friend of the family, remarks the girl has had the equivalent of ten whole chickens put into her.

Mina, meanwhile, has struck up an acquaintance with a mysterious and charming colonel. "Chicken," he explains to her one evening over dinner, "Is the aphrodisiac of the soul. The chicken wants your soul. But . . . you are safe with me." The conversation moves to spices and Mina stands, imagining but perhaps remembering a particular combination of herbs and spices that blend with the juices produced by breaded and fried chicken. "Fried chicken of such rare and succulent flavour as to be found nowhere else . . ."

"There is such a chicken," says Sanders.

Alas, Lucy suffers a heart attack, her arteries utterly clogged after a night's feast in which her bedchamber seemed to her to be flooded with flavour.

Van Helsing knows this isn't the end. He and the other men creep into Lucy's tomb where they find her coffin vacant. Her reanimated corpse enters behind them, carrying a live chicken. Van Helsing subdues her with the golden arches.

In the asylum by Carfax Abbey, the mad Mr. Renfield deep fries flies and worms. Seward asks if he would like a kitten to which Renfield replies, "A chicken! A big chicken!" kneeling before the doctor and begging. Mina is brought to Seward's chambers in the asylum while the men break up the boxes of spices Sanders has stored nearby. Sanders sneaks into Mina's room and the two are sloppily feasting on her bed when Van Helsing and the others enter.

That's about as far as I've gotten. I feel like it would end with Mina chopping the head off a chicken.

Thor Needs Light

Since I cancelled my Disney+ subscription, I remembered I'd been watching through the MCU movies again. Maybe I'll see if I can finish them before August 15th, when my subscription ends. Last night I watched Thor: The Dark World, which used to be considered the worst MCU movie. Now several films have surpassed it, of course. It's still a little dull. Christopher Eccleston is sadly playing a not especially interesting villain. But I did like how it felt more like Norse mythology than any other Thor film. Nice to see taverns on Asgard instead of everything being rainbows and chrome.

I don't quite understand why Stellan Skarsgard running around naked is supposed to be so funny. I like how Loki is actually a trickster in this one. Kat Dennings sure is a buxom beauty, is she only doing Marvel projects now? Her filmography has been fairly sparse the past few years.

The scene where Idris Elba takes down a spaceship with a knife was pretty badass. The scene where a ship crashes through Odin's palace (I don't think that's supposed to be Valhalla, is it?) has a nice feeling of catastrophe. Anthony Hopkins has not had good things to say about working in the MCU but he does a fine job as Odin, managing to inject some mystery into a fairly unremarkable treatment of the character in the script. Natalie Portman . . . She kind of gave a good performance in Black Swan but mostly I don't think she can act. Seeing her in a Thor movie reminds me of the story that leaked about Taika Waititi offering her a role in a Star Wars movie, evidently forgetting or not knowing she was in the prequels. With all the bad press Waititi got for Love and Thunder, looking back now, it really seems like some people were out to get him.

Alan Taylor of Game of Thrones directed Dark World and it's competent work, lacking the real sense of life Waititi gave to Ragnarok. Taylor has said Marvel made a lot of changes he wasn't comfortable with. If that was the problem, it's a shame Disney didn't learn from it.

Thor: Dark World is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1864

Reflective suits were kept beneath the waves.
The normal talk revolved around the King.
At home, he kept his empty paper graves.
The frugal fist proclaimed the ground a ring.
With floating symbols holding hands was rice.
The meal of choice emits a steam for men.
In savage hearts, a leopard skin is nice.
A nanny mixed some sugar cubes with sin.
The storms would gather just to smell the meal.
A champ was forged with broken chairs and cuffs.
A trick has made the haunted king for real.
The court was filled with idle boasts and bluffs.
When time decays the wooden space, we fly.
When plastic stars would melt, we wouldn't cry.

The Direct Results

Lee Marvin will stop at nothing to get the 93k owed to him by a bunch of gangsters in 1967's Point Blank. John Boorman directs this kaleidoscope of experimental action that effectively uses non-linear sounds and imagery.

I was strongly reminded of Suzuki Seijun, whose Branded to Kill came out the same year. I wonder if Boorman was influenced by Youth of the Beast or Tokyo Drifter.

The film begins with a heist gone wrong. We find a disoriented Walker (Marvin) getting shot by Mal Reese (John Vernon) in a prison cell. In voiceover, Walker wonders why he's in a prison cell and asks where he is, what's happening. The audience, having just started the movie, is right there with him.

The pieces start to come together as Walker starts to execute his plan to get what's coming to him. My favourite bit of sound experiment has the sound of Walker's footsteps layered over a sequence where he breaks into a woman's house, getting a stranglehold on her before going into the bedroom and unloading his revolver on her empty bed. Slowly we're given to understand that this is Lynne (Sharon Acker), Walker's wife.

He sits on the couch and says nothing as she, in a drug haze, answers a series of questions he doesn't ask: why she betrayed him, who she's been with since, how she feels about it. It really feels like Marvin had lines in the script and Boorman just said, "Let's try doing it without you saying anything." It works.

There's a kind of playfulness in Suzuki movies that isn't in Point Blank which, for all its off-the-wall experimentation, is fairly grim. Walker seems less like he's seeking satisfaction than like he's executing the actions requisite in a dispassionate, amoral universe.

Point Blank is available on The Criterion Channel.

Voices from the Star Wars Screensaver

People generally don't seem pleased with the last episode of Acolyte. Not that many people watched it, the ratings being a new low for the steadily declining franchise. But I watched it, so I guess I'll talk about it. The gist of my impression is that, as swings of the lightsabre go, this was a whiff.

I was kind of hoping I'd find out if I was right that Mae was a Force projection of Osha's. Instead, the extent of the revelation was Sol saying the two are in fact the same person. What does that mean? Are they clones? Why did they look different as children? Can they read each other's thoughts? He says they're one person, but if that doesn't actually reflect anything that happened in the story, then it's just hot air. It's an idea but one that was never given legs.

A lot of reviews are focusing on the sloppiness of the plotting. Vernestra makes Sol the fall guy for all the murders. Presumably that includes Inara despite all the witnesses on hand to say otherwise. Mae's killer instinct had just kind of faded away a few episodes back so now, whatever, I guess she's into the rule of law over vengeance killing. Maybe it's because she and Osha are the same person, so if one is mild, the other is wild? Ah, the see-saw of duality.

I think the sloppiness of the writing is due less to incompetence than to a genuine lack of concern for plot mechanics. College literature courses nowadays are more focused on applying particular analytic theories to texts than they are on the mechanics of the story so I'm quite ready to believe the writers of Acolyte simply did not care if anything made sense except on the most abstract thematic level. It was the same with Echo. The characters have powers and they do things and if you ask how and what then, well, you're a nerd. Get out of the clubhouse. The point is that institutional authority is corrupted by hubris. The writers see their job as beginning and ending with the idea and actually conveying the reasons behind it likely seems a gratuitous exercise. So Sol doesn't say he killed Mae and Osha's mother because she looked like she was turning into a big death bird in the process of disintegrating Mae. That would be impertinent. Why did Bazil tear up the wiring in Sol's ship? Why did Osha decide to train with Qimir? Why anything? People are always just doing stuff, okay?

I will say it's very sweet how much Leslye Headland is clearly in love with her wife, Rebecca Henderson, who plays Vernestra. Most people watching wondered why the show was leaning so much into her character. The green paint and the bald head don't flatter her and make her look more like a Star Trek alien than a Star Wars alien. She has kind of a snooty governess quality. I could see her playing the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass, though she wouldn't be my first choice. As a character, she never managed to do anything particularly interesting because, without any logic to the events unfolding, there's no particular weight or significance to anything she or anyone else does. But she was front and centre, she was given the quirky lightsabre whip, she got to talk to Yoda at the end. We should all be so lucky to have such an enamoured spouse as Headland is for Henderson. Headland, I guarantee you, would be physically incapable of understanding why anyone would find Henderson uninteresting.

I've cancelled my Disney+ account. I'm just not getting value for money and it is a pain in the ass for me to transfer money from Japan to my U.S. account. I'll probably come back for Andor season 2 next year but for now I'm just sticking with The Criterion Channel.

And Now They're Told Again

Vincent Price took audiences through a watered down set of three Nathaniel Hawthorne stories in 1963's Twice Told Tales. The title comes from a book of short stories by Hawthorne, though only one of the three filmed actually comes from that volume. All three filmed stories lack the moral subterfuge of the originals but they have lovely production design and Price is always, well, priceless.

The first story, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment", substitutes the original story's chaotic moral landscape of sinners with a simpler morality tale in which the doctor's discovery of a fountain of youth leads to him being smacked down by fate. His best friend, played by Price, is only now revealed to be a rival lover of Heidegger's resurrected fiancee. Jealousy and violence ensue, and everyone is punished for tampering in God's domain.

Next is "Rappacini's Daughter". Price plays Rappacini and Joyce Taylor his daughter. This one's actually not so different from the original though, as lovely as Taylor and the production design are, they can't match the lovely, perverted romanticism of Hawthorne's prose.

Finally, Price plays the man intent on unlocking the mystery of "The House of the Seven Gables". Apparently Price starred in another adaptation of this Hawthorne novel back in 1940. I'd like to see that one. This one still has that lovely 1960s Vincent Price lustre but is needlessly rushed to fit the anthology format.

It's a fun little anthology film that would pair well with Milk Duds and a make-out session.

Shannen Doherty

I mentioned in February finding out that Shannen Doherty had terminal cancer, and now she's passed away. I mentioned it in my review of her 1992 erotic TV movie, Blindfold. I knew she was beautiful but, before that movie, I didn't know just how fun she was.

I was never a fan of 90210 but I did watch Mallrats over and over. That movie doesn't exactly showcase her too well--she's the dissatisfied girlfriend the whole time, that movie really belongs to Jason Lee. Last night I chose to honour her memory by watching Heathers, which I suppose is still widely considered her best work.

Though, like in Mallrats, hers really is a supporting role, though one with a bit more variance. I love the bit where she's at the funeral of Heather #1 and we hear her mental prayer about how she'd dreamed of killing the other Heather so many times and considers her death a sign from God that she'd been thinking on the right track.

I read on Wikipedia the film's screenwriter originally intended it for Stanley Kubrick, that it was inspired by Dr. Strangelove. And, yeah, it is that kind of tone of satire. I read an article in the past couple years about how Heathers hasn't aged well, that its humour about school shootings and suicide and bullying is too much about things that are real problems in our world. I would say, that actually means the movie has aged well. The shallow, narcissistic gestures taken in the wake of the apparent suicides are a potent reflection of how violence and tragedy are routinely co-opted by the media to-day. I mean, the murder of the first Heather basically becomes a P.R. triumph for her. Shades of Donald Trump?

The movie's taken some flack for its resemblance to 1976's Massacre at Central High, though that movie is much more of an allegory and lacks the effective satirical elements of Heathers.

Anyway, here's to you, Shannen Doherty.

X Sonnet #1863

No chomping chain could hold the mouth from tongues.
Deserving drinks were dumped above the skull.
A thorny op'ra burst the tumble lungs.
But ramb'ling on, the marble traced the bowl.
The lucky luckless day has shot to years.
With iron shorts, the biggest boy advanced.
The sun delivers racks of frothy beers.
With heedless glee, the drooling foxes danced.
A shaking dream invests a box with blood.
A step beyond reflection brought the fetch.
Distressed and drunk, the cattle dwelt in mud.
A secret red awaits the finest catch.
The ghost was green and never seen as real.
Eventually, the spirits cease to feel.

He Lived to Tell Another Tale

He might have zero military experience, he could've dodged every draft for every war in American history. Thanks to his quick media savvy, Donald Trump has cemented his image as warrior martyr president.

Trump really has had some incredible luck with his campaign, though mostly it's had to do with misguided strategy on the Left. The insistence on going with the safe choice of sitting president Joe Biden as candidate has backfired. Continued, elaborate P.R. wars against Trump have only served to make the Left look dishonest. It's all played so perfectly to creating a beleaguered martyr narrative for Trump, I'd be tempted to call it a conspiracy, though part of the Left's aggressive P.R. war has been to repeatedly label conspiracy theorists as unhinged nutcases. Every time I see one of those memes I get a sick feeling that I'm seeing evidence of a conspiracy.

Of course, Hillary Clinton coined the term "vast right week conspiracy". Is it really so crazy to think people occasionally get together and plan the things they do? I mean, I'm all for spontaneity, but come on.

But the narrative that's accumulated around Trump almost seems better than human beings could plan and execute. For all the rhetoric about the violent Right, it's the Right who keep getting shot. There was Ashli Babbett, the unarmed woman shot and killed in the January 6th riot (yeah, I know she had a pocket knife). Now Trump himself has been injured and one of his supporters killed.

Last week, there was another story about a shooting in the U.S.--all charges were dropped against Alec Baldwin for his part in firing the gun that killed a cinematographer and injured a director during rehearsal for a movie in 2021. The case was dismissed because the prosecution had withheld evidence. The prosecutor at fault, Kate Morrissey, was asked on the stand if she had referred to Baldwin as an "arrogant prick" and a "cocksucker". She denied this, saying that she appreciated his politics and his work on Saturday Night Live. I imagine she was referring to Baldwin's famous run on the sketch comedy show playing Donald Trump. Well, at least she didn't shoot him.

President Biden said the attempted assassination of Trump was not representative of who were are as a people. I'm not sure about that. Of course, I live in a country, Japan, where a former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, was successfully assassinated two years ago at a train station just forty-five minutes north of me by train. I would say that when open, intelligent, critical debate has been broadly devalued and discouraged, it might have something to do with the fact that violence and manipulation are seen as increasingly valid alternatives.

Gonna Need an Ocean of Calamine Lotion

A wealthy family takes in, and is taken in by, a pretty teenage girl in 1992's Poison Ivy. Drew Barrymore made a splash with this box office bomb that nonetheless enjoyed some longevity on home video. It's a shallow, glossy noir pastiche that's occasionally enjoyable schlock.

Sara Gilbert plays Sylvie, a nerdy rich kid who watches Ivy (Barrymore) on a rope swing, dreaming of what it would be like to be "skanjy"--this movie's term for skanky or slutty.

Before you know it, Ivy has taken Sylvie under her wing and has beguiled Sylvie's wealthy parents into letting her move in. Sylvie's parents are played by Cheryl Ladd and Tom Skerritt and I have to say Skerritt is skanjier than anyone else in this movie. He plays a local news anchor given to high handed editorials which his daughter despises. Normally the dad in this kind of movie makes some effort to resist the hot tomato on his radar but from the moment Skerritt lays eyes on Ivy he looks like he wants to shtup her.

He's so pathetically horny, it's kind of hilarious. His wife has a terminal illness and there's a scene where Ivy seduces him right on his wife's sickbed while his wife is sleeping in it and, sure, there's some astonishing audacity on Ivy's part but mostly I was thinking what a callow weakling this guy is. Have some respect for your wife, dude, and just go masturbate somewhere.

Barrymore is delectable in this movie but her character's a two dimensional echo of greater femmes fatale before her. She and Sara Gilbert have good chemistry I wish the movie had made better use of.

A friend here in Japan lent me this movie on DVD so I discovered the film's title in Japan is "Body Heat". That's not a translation from the Japanese words for Body and Heat. It's literally the English words "Body Heat" written in katakana. Meanwhile, Lawrence Kasdan's famous 1981 film, Body Heat, is known as Shiroi dress no onna, or "White dress woman". It's like someone in charge of distributing Poison Ivy in Japan had long rued the lost opportunity to use such a great title. I wonder if there's some other, mid-2000s movie, being sold as Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy wishes it were as good as Body Heat.